CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 



ON THE CHEMICAL EQUIVALENTS OF CERTAIN BODIES, AND 

 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN OXYGEN AND AZOTE. 



THE following is an abstract of a paper recently read before the Royal 

 Society of Edinburgh, by Professor Low : 



The author commences his paper with a review of the. opinions entertained 

 by Dalton, Berzelius, and others, regarding the equivalent numbers of hydro- 

 gen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon, which have been differently fixed accord- 

 Lag as we start from combination by weight or by volume. He remarked 

 that while either view was perfectly suited to explain all the general phenom- 

 ena of decomposition, yet since chemists had begun to examine the phenomena 

 of substitution, it became apparent that it was absolutely necessary to employ 

 the equivalents determined by weight. The author then proceeds to show 

 that on a proper comparison of the properties of these elements, and of the 

 constitution of their compounds, then* atomic weight must be hydrogen 1, 

 carbon 6, nitrogen 7, oxygen 8. 



Reference is then made to the nature of azote, and to the opinion more than 

 once expressed since its discoveiy in 1772, that it might be a compound, and 

 to the views of Davy and Berzelius, the latter of whom supposed it must con- 

 tain an inflammable base, which he proposed to term nitricum. The author 

 stated that he had long since arrived, by an entirely different line of argu- 

 ment, at the conclusion that nitrogen was a compound substance containing 

 carbon ; and as no other element can possibly combine with that substance so 

 as to produce a compound whose equivalent shall be 7, except hydrogen, he 

 concludes that azote is actually represented by the formula C H. Pursuing 

 the same line of argument, he pointed out that oxygen might be a compound 

 of azote and hydrogen, and referred to certain properties of azote as indicat- 

 ing its compound nature. The author concludes his paper by showing how, 

 in all probability, other elements might actually be considered as compounds, 

 referring particularly to selenium and tellurium, chlorine, iodine, and bromine, 

 and the metallic basis of the alkaline earths and alkalies. 



ON THE ABSORPTION OF MATTER BY THE SURFACES OF 



BODIES. 



At the meeting of the British Association, Sir David Brewster stated that 

 if we smear, very slightly with soap, the surface of a piece of glass, whether 



